Couscous

(Found inTextsStages)
In couscous, the meat and vegetable mixture is rather long to cook, but not difficult. And the couscous itself (a kind of coarse semolina) is simple and quick to prepare.
November 16^th 2017511 K4.3 2 hours 40 min.

Hachis parmentier

(Found inTextsStagesIngredients)
This is the French answer (meat with mashed potato and cheese) to the English cottage or shepherd's pie: a typical family recipe which is an excellent way of using up leftover meat. The proportions are vague here: you need "whatever you have left over"...
February 21^th 2011398 K 24.4 1 hour 25 min.

Express chilli con carne

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This is a really express recipe, a "true" chilli is longer and more difficult to do.
February 21^th 2011388 K3.8 35 min.

Hamburgers

(Found inTextsStages)
Hamburgers don't have to be the greasy flabby things you find in fast-food outlets, well-made they can be excellent. It's a very convivial recipe as everything goes on the table, and everyone assembles their own burger according to personal taste.
December 6^th 2015414 K4.8 35 min.

Involtinis

(Found inTexts)
Involtinis are small rolls of meat, usually veal, and cheese. Here is my version.
February 21^th 2011386 K4.4 2 hours 55 min.

Five hours poultry

(Found inTextsStages)
Perhaps simplest recipe on this site, but what a result! The idea is to cook the bird, without fat, at low temperature, covered, and for a long time. In this way, the poultry cooks so as to be almost like a "confit": soft and very tasty. The effect is more spectacular with duck because it is a...
January 27^th 2012535 K3.8 5 hours 15 min.

How to keep meat tender after cooking

(Found inTextsStages)
When you cook meat, the cooking heat causes the juices to run back inside, so the outside dries up somewhat. Here is a tip to avoid this.
February 21^th 2011115 K4.3 5 min.

Oxtail Parmentier

(Found inTextsStages)
Rather like the classic hachis Parmentier, but using oxtail stewed very slowly in red wine and herbs.
October 13^th 2010307 K4.7 5 hours 50 min.

Potted meat (rillettes)

(Found inTextsStagesComments)
Potted meat (rillettes) is cooked long and slow in fat. Rillettes can be of pork or duck. Here is the pork version.
October 3^rd 2019434 K 25 6 hours 50 min.

Stuffed tomatoes and courgettes

(Found inTextsStages)
A classic recipe of French family cooking, but with a more sophisticated filling.
February 21^th 2011336 K3.8 1 hour 50 min.

Mayonnaise

(Found inTexts)
Mayonnaise is a cold egg dressing, quite thick, served with many dishes, usually cold too: meat, fish, vegetables, etc.
February 16^th 2014806 K5 6 min.

Hotpot my grandmother's way

(Found inTexts)
If you like slow-cooked dishes prepared with loving care (mitonné), you will certainly love this hotpot recipe, with the taste of Franche-Comté, inspired by my grandmother. It's an old-fashioned dish full of flavours and aromas, cooked vegetables, stock, smoked sausages, all cooked long and slow.
February 21^th 2011335 K5 4 hours 7 min.

Béarnaise sauce

(Found inTexts)
This very tasty sauce, flavoured with tarragon, chervil and shallot, with its hint of acidity, is perfect for grilled fish or meats. Its well-known as a difficult sauce, but here are all the tips that you need to succeed.
May 22^th 2016338 K4 1 hour 6 min.

Pâté de campagne

(Found inTextsStages)
Here is a personal version of the famous country pâté. It's an interesting recipe to prepare in large quantities because it keeps well and freezes easily. The secret of a good pâté is of course the ingredients, but also how it is cooked.
October 3^rd 20192.06 M 23.7 7 hours 55 min.

Moussaka

(Found inTextsStages)
Here is my personal version of this famous recipe from the eastern Mediterranean. It's a kind of gratin, made with layers of aubergines, cooked meat with tomatos and bechamel sauce with cheese.
August 1^st 2011372 K 14 2 hours 55 min.

Potimarron (chestnut pumpkin) "au gratin"

(Found inTexts)
We could almost say a "Parmentier" of potimarron: a layer of left over cooked chicken, covered with potimarron purée and cheese, put to brown in the oven.
February 21^th 2011261 K 24 1 hour 35 min.

Gratin Dauphinois

(Found inTexts)
This recipe is a bit sensitive for people from Dauphiné (a French area around the city of Grenoble), many of them are sure to have the "true" recipe. Here is the version of the famous French chef Michel Guérard. The most interesting thing about gratin Dauphinois, is that it has a delicate hint of...
August 13^th 2016386 K 25 1 hour 3 min.

How to cook rice in rice-cooker

(Found inTexts)
Cooking rice in a specially adapted "rice-cooker" is practical and quick: you don't have to watch it during cooking, it's fast (15 minutes) and the rice-cooker switches automatically to "keep warm".
February 21^th 2011914 K 24.9 20 min.

Thaï rice with small vegetables

(Found inTexts)
Vegetables cut in small dice, cooked in stages, and mixed with cooked Thaï rice. Delicious alone or served with meat for example.
February 21^th 2011279 K4.7 1 hour 35 min.

Express sauerkraut

(Found inTextsStages)
Sauerkraut (choucroute in French) is a traditional Alsatian recipe. It consists of fermented cabbage slowly cooked with white wine, potatoes and a variety of salted pork meats. This is a simplified and fairly quick version.
February 21^th 2011357 K 13.9 2 hours 25 min.

A little molecular gastronomy

Long-cooked meat becomes meltingly soft. What happens to achieve this result?
August 29^th 202339 K4.4

Other cookery websites

List of my other favourite sites.
August 29^th 2023195 K3.9

Cooking with herbs

Herbs: there's nothing else so small that can add so much to a recipe. They are not only for garnishing, but are a true part of the dish, sometimes one of the main ingredients. A small example of the "power" of herbs: you make a chopped carrot salad, which is very good with a vinaigrette, but if you...
June 3^rd 2024188 K 13.9

sage

This is a plant of which the leaves are used. It's goes perfectly (in my opinion) with white meats like pork, veal or poultry.
August 29^th 202341 K4.2

tarragon

Tarragon is a herb with strongly aromatic leaves. These are used for their characteristic flavour that goes very well with meat and fish.
August 29^th 202351 K4.1

Submitting a comment or image

You can, if you wish, add a comment on the pages, articles and recipes of the site. This comment, or question, will be immediately put on line and available for consultation. Here are a few tips for your writing. .
August 29^th 202379 K 23.9

Well-cooked meat

Have you ever noticed that if you like your meat well done, it invites strange looks? For instance, in a restaurant, when asked “How would you like that cooked?” If you reply, “Well done,” it is almost as if you are swearing….
May 21^th 201130 K 14.4

The so-called "nervous" meats

You've probably heard this before, we're talking about "nervous" meat, or meat with nerves, to describe what is indicated by the blue arrow on the left. This is a piece of beef, and what we call a nerve is not a nerve, it is in fact collagen (chemists sometimes call it a "collagen sink"), a...
April 16^th 202127 K4.5

Incise some meats before cooking

Have you ever had this rather unpleasant phenomenon: you grill a meat, a pork chop or a veal cutlet for example, and during cooking it becomes completely deformed? It takes a very strange shape, a bit difficult to describe, a sort of cone around the central area of the meat, which also hinders...
June 19^th 20218,1824.9

Wipe meats and fish before cooking

When you want to cook meat or fish, there's a very simple yet very important step to take before you even start: It's to dry, or wipe, each side of the meat or fish, sometimes called "dabbing" or "sponging". But why? And how? Let me explain.
April 14^th 20245,1474.5

Properly cooked! (the taste)

Going out to a restaurant is getting harder at the moment. In France, at least, you have to try and find one that has agreed to pass on the new lower rate of VAT at anything other than a symbolic level, and there aren't many. And then, most importantly, you have to find a good one: one where you...
February 6^th 201114 K 14.6

Maillard reactions

This subject cropped up recently in a discussion with my three charming nieces; do you know what Maillard reactions are? With a name like that, they could well be some principle in mechanics, but in fact the term applies to something much closer to all of us: it's what gives food more flavour...
January 28^th 201533 K4

In praise of slow cooking

You will no doubt have noticed that in cookery, it's often the actual cooking process that gets neglected. This is understandable; it comes at the end of the recipe and getting the dish in the oven is something of a relief (ah, that's done!), which frees us to cope with what's left: tidying the...
February 9^th 201137 K4.2

The ideal restaurant

Like all passionate cooks (I suppose), from time to time I dream of opening my own restaurant. I imagine loads of things: it will be like this or like that, we'll do this, I'll cook that, the room will have this or that – in short, I dream.
October 15^th 201213 K4.4

Too much sweet and savoury

There is a food trend which is creeping in everywhere in France right now: mixing sweet with savoury. In some restaurants, it is becoming difficult to order a classic dish, like “roast veal” for instance, without being served fruits in the garnish or honey/conserves/syrup in the sauce or cooked...
November 3^rd 201123 K4.5

Choosing a chopping board

It's a no-brainer, surely? If you want a chopping board, just find a piece of wood, and Bob's your uncle! You can happily chop away with a knife and not damage the table or worktop. But in reality, it's a bit more complicated than that. You need to be careful what you are buying, in particular the...
May 8^th 201246 K4.6

The secret of cooking until "done"

This is a real chef's skill: being able to look at a fish fillet cooking and say, "Stop – that's enough, it's cooked". I always admire this ability to see at a glance if something is done. It is what sets the professionals apart from us mere amateurs. And it's true that how fish is cooked is...
November 26^th 201216 K4.4

The different cooking modes

In cooking, cooking means bringing food into contact with a source of heat, to transform it: improving its taste, and sometimes its texture. This contact with the heat source can be achieved in a number of ways: these are the cooking methods, and let's take a look at the main ones.
July 24^th 20244,3784.7

Perpetual stock

It's something you have probably have done yourself: cooked or pre-cooked vegetables before adding them to a recipe. This is almost always done the same way: peel the chosen vegetables (carrots, for example), cut them up, boil them in salted water (using a tablespoon or so of coarse salt per litre),...
November 22^th 201625 K5

Fats for cooking

If you need to fry or sear anything a frying pan or saucepan, the temperature is likely to be high. In particular, I have cooking red meat in mind. In this case, what should fat should we use? And at what temperature?
January 23^th 201817 K5

Rosemary in recipes

Rosemary, as I’m sure you know, is a culinary herb, one of the famous French "herbes de Provence", and is very effective in bringing a real taste of the Mediterranean to any dish. The classic way to use it in a recipe is to add a sprig or two and leave it in during cooking as a way of...
April 18^th 201820 K4.7

The 3 essential knives

You must have heard a chef or cook say: "There’s no good cooking without good ingredients". This is very true, of course, but for any amateur or beginner it is equipment that really counts to start with. What I mean is that you should not skimp on kitchen equipment, good utensils, a food...
May 30^th 201821 K5

Should a sausage be pricked before cooking?

If you are using sausages in a recipe, you may have already asked yourself the question: Should you prick it before cooking it, or not? You will certainly find as many opinions "you should prick" as "you should not". Let's try to untangle all this.
September 29^th 201843 K4.1

Roasting spices

If you like your food a little, or a lot, spicy, you'll no doubt have a jar or sachets of mixed spices in your cupboards from which to draw when preparing a dish. I'm thinking, for example, of curries, chili and couscous, all of which fill the kitchen, and sometimes far beyond...
October 30^th 20206,0174.9

The infinite variety of salads

Making a salad for a meal, a few ingredients of your choice and a sauce to bind it all together is still one of the best ways to cook something really good quickly and simply. And since there is often a "fresh" aspect with the vegetables in the ingredients, not only does it taste good, but it's...
March 13^th 20216,4374.6

Let's rehabilitate the burger

The burger is a sandwich that is very fashionable at the moment, and as for all other sandwiches, the worst (often) rubs shoulders with the best (much more rare). In principle, I'm probably not teaching you anything, it's a sandwich made of a small round bun, rather soft, like a sandwich bread,...
April 10^th 20215,8364.9